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Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#421

Post by Tor3 »

matz1 wrote: post #317
benlumen wrote: post #149

I'm feeling a deep-seated wave of relief that I never thought possible. Like waking up from a year-long nightmare. Thank God.

I wake up long time ago when I realized the virus is not as dangerous as the media reported it. You too should wake up right now and live your life. Stop being afraid.

Why shouldn't I be afraid? If my parents get infected there's a close to 100% chance that they'll die, due to their existing conditions. And I have to visit them, so do others. There's a real risk of infection there.

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#422

Post by howlgarnish »

rich_sasha wrote: post #346
bufferoverflow wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we can eradicate it by contact tracing. With 90% efficiency it will be extremely tough for the virus to spread. For any new cases you simply test everyone in the vicinity of the infected person. But I don't think even that will be necessary. 90% efficiency reduces R so much, it will probably die out on its own. The real problem is mutations that are not covered by the vaccine. If it mutates as efficiently as…

Measles et al never died out, despite very aggressive, and for years successful vaccination programmes (thank you anti-vaccesrs for messing that up). But even if we all need to get vaccinated once a year, for a 90% immunity, that sounds manageable. So good news, if it all holds up.

Measles is also famously contagious, with R values on the order of 3-6x higher than COVID-19.

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#423

Post by acdha »

ketamine__ wrote: post #363
acdha wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, I get that you find lockdowns an inconvenience but the real world isn’t a TV show where a cheap and easily distributed cure will be invented 10 minutes before the end of the episode. People will reliably die until a vaccine or highly effective treatment is widely available, and the only way to slow that is to rely on proven public health techniques. While you’re being inconvenienced remember that you’re better…

You criticized the commenter for objecting to lockdown. Why are the people you refer to dying? Is it possible it is because they aren't quarantining and staying at home?

Until we have an effective prevention or cure, we have to reduce the chances of catching it, especially during the period where people are spreading it before they show symptoms. Since it spreads mostly from prolonged time breathing the same air, the point of lockdowns is preventing those situations from arising. Quarantining after you become symptomatic is too late and without legal weight too many people won’t avoid situations to stop community spread.

That matters because there are things that you have to do, and you don’t have a way to control other people’s decisions. Closing high-risk recreational activities means that someone can go shopping with less risk because the people near them weren’t hanging out at the bar the night before.

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#424

Post by EamonnMR »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #305
lbeltrame wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latest data (preprint, not peer reviewed etc etc) mention memory B and T cells up to 8 months after recovery from the illness. This means that an immunity of one year is probably likely. This would be probably enough to quench the spread, but not to eradicate the virus.

I think we can eradicate it by contact tracing. With 90% efficiency it will be extremely tough for the virus to spread. For any new cases you simply test everyone in the vicinity of the infected person. But I don't think even that will be necessary. 90% efficiency reduces R so much, it will probably die out on its own. The real problem is mutations that are not covered by the vaccine. If it mutates as efficiently as…

Flu has a unique capability to recombine that allows it to mutate more readily than other viruses. Hoping that the more simple coronavirus will be less fortunate.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigenic_shift

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#425

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #305
lbeltrame wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latest data (preprint, not peer reviewed etc etc) mention memory B and T cells up to 8 months after recovery from the illness. This means that an immunity of one year is probably likely. This would be probably enough to quench the spread, but not to eradicate the virus.

I think we can eradicate it by contact tracing. With 90% efficiency it will be extremely tough for the virus to spread. For any new cases you simply test everyone in the vicinity of the infected person. But I don't think even that will be necessary. 90% efficiency reduces R so much, it will probably die out on its own. The real problem is mutations that are not covered by the vaccine. If it mutates as efficiently as…

This is 90% protection against disease, not necessarily 90% protection against infection. There's an important distinction:

* Protection against disease means that you don't get sick. You may still contract the virus and spread it to others (the Salk vaccine against Polio works this way).

* Sterilizing immunity means that you can't even get infected, so that you can't pass the virus on to other people. It does not look like there's any information about sterilizing immunity in this press release.

Importantly, this means that even with this vaccine, the virus may still be able to spread, and only vaccinated people will be protected (i.e., no herd immunity).

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#426

Post by rsynnott »

camhart wrote: post #128
colaclanth wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what are you insinuating here?

That the timing of the press release is interesting... first business day after the election is called. Massive corporations do have political agendas. I don't think anyone would argue they don't. But maybe it's just coincidence?

In your conspiracy theory, surely, they'd just have announced after polls closed? Why wait for it to be called? Also, this vaccine was actually developed by a German company, who would likely resent their partner playing this game.

This timing is consistent with when we've been told we might see early results all along, really; it shouldn't be that surprising. Expect announcements from other teams over the next couple of months.

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#427

Post by ceejayoz »

barumi wrote: post #402
ceejayoz wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We manage to get $1M cruise missiles anywhere on the globe quite quickly. If the world can mobilize for WWII - the US alone built 1,200 warships in a four year period, 2,700 Liberty ships, 300k aircraft, etc. - we can mobilize for a global pandemic... if we choose to.

The world didn't mobilized for ww2. One country mobilized and started to threaten the existence of all.its neighboring states, and those who managed to leverage geographical and climate barriers managed to prepare themselves to intervene. This is by far not the challenge covid19 poses to the world. It wasn't when it was China's local and regional problem, and it is not after it spread out of China and became a pandem…

The analogy is imperfect, but it's imperfect in both directions - we don't have to make 300k planes and fight Nazis, we "just" have to produce a bunch of vaccine and some freezers.

It should be substantially less difficult than winning WWII, which again - we were capable of scaling up industrially to accomplish.

> this is only observed during the initial spread before herd immunity kicks in

When will that be? NYC's new spike is demonstrating even their enormous outbreak didn't generate enough of it.

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#428

Post by kolinko »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #304
jryle70 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So those who claim that Russian vaccine is only on the 1/2 phase spread an outright lie. Russian vaccine was announced back in August, when it was only on phase 1/2. In contrast phase 3 Pfizer/biontech had been well under way at that time. Russia announced a not fully tested vaccine, proudly called it "Sputnik V". The exact words Putin used when announced it was: "As far as I know, a vaccine against a new coronavir…

Does anyone know if the Russian vaccine is “live,” “deactivated,” or his new RNA type?

genetically modified adenovirus

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#429

Post by mumblemumble »

gizmo wrote: post #372
bufferoverflow wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we can eradicate it by contact tracing. With 90% efficiency it will be extremely tough for the virus to spread. For any new cases you simply test everyone in the vicinity of the infected person. But I don't think even that will be necessary. 90% efficiency reduces R so much, it will probably die out on its own. The real problem is mutations that are not covered by the vaccine. If it mutates as efficiently as…

Contract tracing hasn't worked at scale anywhere. It's a nice idea conceptually, but the problem is psychological. People stop caring about tracing when 98% of all trace connections are false positives. If a person is infectious for a week and the r0 is around 1 then only 1 person of all the people they've been in contact with will actually contract the virus on average. The other 50+ people, assuming they can even b…

There's also participation on the contact side. In Western countries, surveys indicate we can't convince even half of people to install a contact tracing smartphone app. According to my state's department of health, practical experience indicates we can't convince even half of people to pick up the phone and respond to a contact tracing interview.

> Covid19 would also be over if people with symptoms would just stay home.

No it wouldn't. One of the things that makes SARS-CoV-2 such a problem is that people get contagious long before they show symptoms. Similarly to for influenza and the common cold, many people get contagious without ever developing symptoms.

Re: Covid vaccine: First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

#430

Post by snarf21 »

jakozaur wrote: post #214

Good: + ~90% of individuals achieve immunity. + no significant side-effects. Not so good: - two doses needed, 3 weeks apart, immunity after one month from first dose. Slow rollout. - -80C storage and transport needed. Challenging, but doable in developed countries, but still may slow down mass rollout. Not feasible in many developing countries. I still wonder about long-term immunity. Anyone can share any insight?

This is good news but I'm worried about the mutation already showing up in minks in Denmark. Minks apparently have a near identical respiratory system.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/denmark-plans-kill-15-mil...

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